


eddie’s bad day

by fleurmatisse



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25253491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurmatisse/pseuds/fleurmatisse
Summary: Eddie thinks, sometimes, that his brain goes in cycles, and being alternatively irritated and overwhelmed by everyday things are part of that cycle, just like how sometimes his anxiety will spike for seemingly no reason except to remind him it exists.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 45





	eddie’s bad day

As a general rule, Eddie keeps his negativity to himself. Of course, there are moments where he’ll get angry and snap, and, like everyone, he has the capacity to be mean. He’s generally anxious and worrisome, and he’ll voice his concerns when he deems it necessary. But unless there’s a defined reason for his bad mood, one that can be fixed just by talking about it, he would rather not introduce bad feelings into the atmosphere. He prefers to ignore the mood to the best of his ability, and if it starts making him snippy, he’ll self-isolate until he feels better.

It gets harder to do this when he moves in with Richie. Between them, they can only afford a small apartment, which means Eddie can either be upset in the living-room-slash-kitchen or he can be upset in their bedroom, and he doesn’t like being upset in their bedroom. He remembers it when he’s trying to sleep, and it feels like an infection waiting to happen, picking at him so that he stays up long past the time he wants to be awake. He knows that doesn’t make sense, but sometimes emotions just feel like a physical presence, thickening the air and pressing against him until he pops like a balloon. He thinks Richie might buy him crystals if he told him about it, the ones “boho” Instagram influencers have in all their aesthetically pleasing flatlays. He also thinks Richie would laugh if Eddie ever said the phrase flat lay around him, not out of any sort of malice but because Eddie claims to be social media illiterate and it would prove that he, too, has fallen victim to scrolling through other people’s photos mindlessly. At least he’s still ignorant about Twitter. That seems like a nightmare.

His first true bad mood creeps up on him slowly over the course of three days. It starts with an inability to sleep like a normal person, his mind racing all night like he imagines Richie’s does so that he’s running on six hours of sleep in two nights. Then he keeps having to deal with the most annoying people at work, and he refuses to give in and snap at them, because he has the vague idea that if he’s nice in the face of their impatience, they might see the error of their ways and stop being complete assholes. He can safely attribute these two things to the bad mood. Or, they’re at least making it worse. He thinks, sometimes, that his brain goes in cycles, and being alternatively irritated and overwhelmed by everyday things are part of that cycle, just like how sometimes his anxiety will spike for seemingly no reason except to remind him it exists. 

He gets home ten minutes later than usual because of one of the annoying people at work and the way that Richie’s jacket is hanging on the (carefully hung with removable adhesive) hooks by the door makes him frown. One sleeve is inside out, and he hung it backwards. Eddie doesn’t touch it, but he considers it for long enough that Richie calls out to him from the bedroom.

“You get stuck in the door out there, Eds? Or is that a burglar about to turn a robbery into a murder unless I use my slick seduction skills and convince them to give up their life of crime?”

Eddie had closed the door while he listened to Richie and hangs his jacket next to Richie’s before he answers, doing his best to keep his voice from dipping into something unhappy. He feels better just being home, but bad moods are persistent. “It’s me.”

“Oh, thank God, that other one would’ve been awkward for you to walk in on later,” Richie says. He doesn’t come out to greet him, but that’s because Eddie has to go into the room to get fresh clothes before he showers away the smell of coffee. He’s lying on the bed in the dark, his laptop open on his stomach. Whatever’s on the screen paints his face with bright blue. He doesn’t have his glasses on. Judging by the squint that accompanies his smile, he hadn’t just decided to wear contacts. “Hey, babe.”

Eddie smiles back, then gets a shirt (originally Richie’s) and sweatpants (that would look almost comically short if Richie tried to steal them) out of the dresser without turning on the light.

“Do you wanna get something for dinner?” Richie asks, and the light on his face turns white as he clicks the mouse. “All fuckin’ day I have been dying for some goddamn pizza.”

“Sure,” Eddie says. He stops by the bed and briefly distracts Richie from his pizza craving with a kiss. Richie hums and smiles into it, lifting a hand from his laptop to run through Eddie’s hair and then rest on the back of his neck. Eddie again feels incrementally better. “Get me something thin crust.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie says, releasing him. “You and your love of crunchy pizza is something I will never understand.”

“Not all of us want pizza you have to eat with a fork,” Eddie says, falling easily into the well-worn argument as he heads toward the bathroom. 

“You can eat deep-dish with your hands if you’re not a coward!” Richie calls after him. Eddie laughs.

The bad mood catches up to him again in the shower, where he fails to scrub the prickly feeling away, and follows him back out. Richie has emerged from the bedroom to sit on the couch. He’s flipping through channels faster than he can reasonably see what’s on, something that drives Eddie nuts, especially because Richie usually ends up on Netflix anyway. Eddie puts his work clothes in the hamper and lingers in the bedroom for a minute before the mental image of his vague irritation spreading through the room like a cloud gets him to join Richie on the couch.

“Did you know,” Richie says, “that most of the ocean just has  _ nothing _ in it? It’s just wide open water.” He shudders, and then brightens as he stops his channel flipping and turns to Eddie. “But they showed this, like, mass of seaweed just floating out there and all the baby fish would hang out with it and then there’d be huge schools of fish and everything else would show up to have a feeding frenzy. It’s like watching people finding where all the good food trucks have parked for the day.”

Eddie smiles and listens to his recap of Blue Planet, which he’d been binging out of order since he got home at one. By the time their pizza shows up, Eddie knows more about fish than he ever would have found out on his own. Richie particularly liked the coral reef fish and claimed it inspired him to search for more patterned button-downs, but if he had actually bought any, Eddie knows he would have showed him just to get his usual eye roll at the gaudy colors. Richie deviates from Blue Planet to some Netflix original that Eddie doesn’t bother getting invested in as they eat; they either get cancelled or turn to shit, and he learned his lesson after the last three shows he liked were given the ax. 

After they eat, Eddie cleans up the kitchen and takes his homework to the couch while Richie finishes the last few episodes of Blue Planet and writes in intermittent spurts. Eddie doesn’t notice that he’s been staring at the same page of notes for five minutes straight until Richie nudges him in the thigh with his toes. He jumps and looks over; Richie has a faint smile.

“What’s up, buttercup?” Richie asks. 

“Abnormal psych,” Eddie says.

Richie rolls his eyes. “You have been practically silent all night, and you didn’t even tell me to stop talking about coconut crabs earlier. I’m concerned. Did something happen today?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Eddie says. He shrugs, looking away from Richie’s sometimes too-observant eyes and rereading his notes for the twelfth time. “Guess I’m just tired.”

He feels Richie looking at him for a minute, contemplative, and then Richie pokes him again.

“Is that due tomorrow?” he asks.

“No,” Eddie says, and then Richie is taking his homework off his lap and dropping it onto the steamer trunk that doubles as their coffee table. Eddie blinks, and Richie takes the pen out of his hand. “I was working on that,” he says mildly.

“You were having a staring contest with it, and since it doesn’t have eyes, I think it’s a fixed fight,” Richie replies. He tugs on Eddie’s sleeve. “Come here.”

Eddie considers getting up instead, grabbing his notebook and finishing his work at the kitchen counter or their bedroom. He lets Richie pull him across the (not very big anyway) couch and situates himself sideways against Richie’s chest, one of Richie’s legs between him and the back of the couch, his other foot flat on the floor. Richie wraps his arms around him and kisses the top of his head. 

“I’m not having a good day,” Eddie divulges a few minutes later, after he’s watched sea urchins clear a reef. 

“I could tell,” Richie says. He sounds like he’s smiling. Eddie sighs and turns his face to Richie’s chest. Richie brings a hand up to the back of his head, restless fingers scrubbing through his hair. “I’m glad you told me.”

Eddie sighs again, and it catches briefly in his throat. He hates feeling like this. Richie keeps playing with his hair, narrates the animals on screen in his best impression of David Attenborough, and doesn’t say anything about the fact that Eddie is getting his shirt wet with frustrated tears and probably a little snot. He makes Eddie laugh with a horrible attempt at describing sea cucumbers, and Eddie feels better. Still not good. But better. He’ll take it.

**Author's Note:**

> this offering to the it fandom is brought to u by the fact i never title gdocs and have to open everything to know what it is so i found this fic from last november that i have now deemed postable *finger guns*


End file.
